Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Today was a pretty laid back day, all truth be told. My greatest adventure was going to the super market down the street to get some shampoo. To you this may not sound all that important, but have you seen pictures of me? Do you understand why shampoo is such a key item? If this were the legend of Zelda, it would be a quest item, and you would need to unlock the chest that contained it with the big key. All those keys that just fall out of the last remaining skeleton? They'd do nothing. Nothing! You'd need the big key.

But that wasn't all I did today. No, I also surfed the internet – and again, you're thinking so what? That's nothing special. But in the course of replying to emails certain things hit me. Certain realizations came to light. Not the least of which is that I'm a big geek. It's true. I'm a nerd. It's obvious, I know – but I think I've been trying to push it to the background for a while now. Why I'm a world traveller. I'm cultured. Sure, maybe, kinda, depends on who you ask. But by the same tokens I also love comic books, and video games, and science fiction. And I think in extended metaphors that relate to them. I also think in extended metaphors which doesn't do much to give me street cred, or detract from the geek factor – but I think it does work well with the whole, “I'm and English Teacher” thing. Although right now I'm not really one.

Right now I'm more or less unemployed. We'll deal with that come September 2010 though, alright? Lets just focus on the here and now.

Months and months and months ago – before this trip, maybe during Edinburg, I stated that I as going to start writing for myself, and no one else. The thing is, that's really hard to do. It is. Try writing just for you – most of the time you don't even know what you want... but I'm going to start writing to that effect again. Will there be changes? Who can say. But it's time I'm a bit more honest with myself.

If I was at home right now, I'd be filling my time making these: http://www.cubeecraft.com/ or constructing perler sprites: http://www.flickr.com/photos/foglera/sets/1686827/ or even turning this: http://www.videogamesblogger.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/a-boy-and-his-blob-wallpaper-2-1280x1024.jpg into a 3d piece of art. All these things I will undoubtably do months from now. But for the moment I'm not home. I'm in Peru, and that's spec-tacular. Not unlike Spider-Man in his pre-Brand New Day story lines. Now? Forget about it. Marvel? Why? Retcon your retcon of retcon – alright?

Anyway, enjoy your life where you are doing what you're doing – because if you don't it will pass you by, and there will be nothing but regrets later. All those things will be far more fulfilling in the future because I've enjoyed myself today.

So, for you, maybe shampoo and internet isn't a big deal – but for me?

Ohh I finished reading Red Rabbit too. Now I'm reading a book called Contagious by Scott Sigler. I picked it up at the hostel in Bangkok. It's abound aliens who are trying to take over the world – but it's better than that. It's well written - which is more than I can say about the Clancy novels I've been reading. It doesn't hurt my head to flip pages, or embarrass me to reading in public. So that's something.

The reason I couldn't really get up to much today was that at 1:45pm we all had to meet up to catch a six hour bus to Nazca. Fantastic, I know! Wait until you hear about what I did there. A-Mazing. (look – the letter I posted previously clearly indicates that things are being written out of chronological order. Sorry to break the suspension of disbelief.)

I'd like to take a moment to pause and address a new issue with my Asus netbook. The M and the U keys have been giving me problems (not registering 30% of the time when pressed) but now – a new issue appears. When I push the N key sometimes it activates the space bar too. What fun! Moving on!

On this bus I was subjected to movie after movie. There was no plugging in your headset to hear them – nope, they played over the speaker system in Spanish. But due to the wonders of DVDs they had English subtitles. I'd like to point out that Spanish Dubs of English movies are really well done. The lips seem to match, voices are similar, and emotion and inflection carries over. Much different that Asian dubs, I'll tell you that right now. Or some of the dubs that are just one person reading all the lines. I think those are often Italian, are they not?

What movies were they? Blood Diamond – which was alright until it started skipping, so to solve the problem the volume was turned up so we could hear the skipping even better. Muted, with subtitles it was almost still bearable. But loud? And we kept this up for an hour (30 minutes of movie time – 60 our skipping time) until near the end, where it was just turned off. Just turned off! I'm told Leonardo DiCaprio dies and that the father gets his messed up son back, but can I really know for sure? And the diamond, what happened to it?

Remember for that year when no one wanted to buy diamonds? Apparently the suffering is cool now – we have better flavours of the month to worry about these days.

Next up? My sisters keeper. Dug it. Honest and true. Really dug it. Other people on the bus, when recapping it, seemed to have missed the most important part which leads to a 100% wrong understanding. That was cute.

Finally? Waterhorse. Or Free Willy with Nessie. This movie? So depressing! Was it really necessary that Nessie dies at the end? I mean sure it happens off camera, and most people probably won't think of that aspect of the movie, but it's all there. That Waterhorse you came to know and love? Yeah – it's dead by the end of the film.

Also – Loch Ness is the most voluminous Scottish Loch – so when the shells started to drop into the lake? What the heck was the monster doing right under them? Do you know what crap odds you need to to be right under the shells on a 21.8 square mile loch? It's over 200m deep people!

Yes, that's right. That's when I stopped believing in the movie. Monsters, and little Scottish kids not being beaten for being as annoying as this one was, that I could handle. But the monster being right under the shells? Please.

And then we arrived in Nazca, checked into our rooms around 10 or 11pm paid some extra money (of course) so we could keep them until later on the next day. Nice of them to charge us extra when the hotel was mostly empty. And then we all went off to sleep. Ever so slowly, this trip is starting to pick up.